Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2005 14:21:54 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman
Subject: Boys and Girls On An Autumn Day
"Boys and Girls On An Autumn Day"
by
Timothy Stillman
"Laugh while you're taking it/
Smile while you're making it/
Even though you're faking it/
Nobody's gonna know...."
Alan Price
"O Lucky Man!"
Tommy was ten that Autumn. He had discovered
masturbation. And how he loved it so. It was a comic book
life Tommy led. And playing with himself was still more of
the comic book life. He saw it all as that-panels of bright
even lurid colors, flashing super heroes beside trees and the
school and his house and his mom's garden, flash in an
instant and then gone seemingly for good. Day time and
storm time and wintertime too. Tommy loved it all.
He was one of those unique kids who had many friends and
did not feel guilty about asking them to masturbate with
him, that his folks had some porno videos, and if they
would like to come to his house, then his buddies could all
jack off and have fun, and then they could do other stuff, if
they wanted. The other boys and girls who liked Tommy
quite a lot thought that was quite a good idea. Except for
one thing. Tommy's dad was a minister. And that turned
lots of them off.
Tommy asked why. His parents were gone for a month on
a Holy Land tour and it would be perfect for Tommy's
friends to drop by after school or on weekends...but the
boys and girls said they just would not feel right about
doing it in a preacher's house. Tommy shrugged. OK, he
said, I'll just have all the fun to myself. And the kids asked,
what was a preacher doing with porno videos anyway?
And Tommy just smiled that enigmatic smile of which he
was the star in his school.
Oh, they loved to jack with him in the forest and on the hill
outside of town in the dark and safety and they loved to
see the all of Tommy and Tommy loved to see the all them
and there was a great deal of love going round, and
Tommy was very short and somewhat pale and had little
blue eyes and a snub nose that was cute. And his pecker
was cute too. Little hard on with out any pubic hair, little
pink golden glow to it and the boys and girls loved it so.
Just as he loved theirs, the boys' penises and the girls
snatches, only Tommy never knew what the snatches were
going to snatch away some day, until one boy made a
guillotine motion with his hand to his dick clamping down,
and Tommy didn't think that was a pleasant kind of super
hero kind of image. Like Peter Parker would have his dick
cut off by---no never.
So he did not let that boy come with them anymore to their
masturbation circles, which to Tommy's eyes were green
of forest or russet of golden Autumn, or skies of cobalt
blue, or snow of chalk white flakes, to Tommy who was
not old enough to remember much of anything other than
his parents were nice parents, and the kids at school were
nice also, and he had never had any trouble fitting in. He
was one of those persons who was liked. And when he
discovered jacking on his own, though it wasn't difficult to
figure out that hards felt good and stroking them felt
better, he asked his close friend, Joel, why he had never
told Tommy this, or did Joel not know it yet? Joel
responded, you're a preacher's kid, Tommy. And Tommy
got mad and said, so what? Joel responded, nothing wrong
with that, it's just that--you're a preacher's kid. Tommy
responded, fuck. Joel was aghast. Tommy apologized.
And never said fuck again. Tommy was the leader of the
group. The Jack off Club. He was the getter of the
magazines at the drugstore, which at the time were
PLAYBOY, PENTHOUSE, CAVALIER, and occasionally
he would go to the beatnik part of town and find a
HUSTLER, the magazine, not the person. His father called
it the beatnik side of town, though Tommy didn't know
what was so beat nick about the poorer side of Kansas
City, or what a beat nick was, was that like a tired Santa
Claus?, or a nick who gets beaten a lot? Didn't matter. The
kids were all straight, to their knowledge at the moment,
but Tommy knew the boys liked to play with the boys and
the girls with the girls as much as intermingling.
They pretended Tommy was not a preacher's kid, but as
time went along, and some of the boys started to spurt, and
Tommy did too, and some pubic hair started to begin
growing, they had a tougher time with Tommy being with
them, because Tommy was a...you know. They started
calling Y.K. for you know. Tommy didn't know what that
meant and they wouldn't tell him and they started laughing
at him a bit here and there, and they started making fun of
his comic book world with its bright colors and its high
morals and its object lessons and its good vs. evil and black
vs. white and Tommy said to them, you have to believe in
something, so I believe there are super heroes around, and
Joel who by this time was beginning not to be Tommy's
best friend, which hurt both Joel and Tommy, said Tommy,
I want you to suck me off. And Tommy blushed and
pushed back and the group on the hill of early November
held him and kept him from running away.
What? Tommy asked. This was just wrong. Tommy was a
nice kid and so was Joel and so were all of them really.
They had a good life and they went to a good school and
things were jake with all of them and there was this golden
needle that was beginning to tear it apart like worms in
cocoons who instead of rushing to be born to be butterflies
instead raced backwards to be worms for the rest of their
lives and crawl in the dust and dirt and get eaten by dogs
or possums or something. And Joel said it again.
I want you to blow me. And Tommy felt the naked girls
giggling and the naked boys too, for that had been here this
early evening jacking as usual. But they had never put their
things in things and they had never had their mouths
certainly on others parts, that would have been as
unthinkable as having jack off parties at Tommy's parents
house, which was off now anyway, since his parents were
home, and video tape watching was for his parents late at
night when they thought Tommy was sleeping innocently.
But Tommy would never touch anyone or "blow" anyone,
and he knew what it meant, and it had to do with being a
preacher's son and somehow sin and religion and comic
books and being a kid and being liked and disliked and the
beat nick ho ho ho part of town, all of these things were
coalescing, and squeezing in on Tommy who did not like it
one bit, even though he did like Minelle and Judy now
pressing, first time touching ever, their naked fronts into
his naked back, and their flat chests against his back bone
and their pubes against his butt, and that made his penis
stand out straight again. and when the girls started nibbling
the sides of his neck and raising their hands over and down
to his titties...god he was hard. As he pushed back into
them and felt his butt on their pubes. He rubbed there for a
moment, somehow seeming naked now more than ever
before. Then--
Tommy was embarrassed and tried to pull away, though he
didn't try too hard but the boys naked too in front of him
held him there with their hands on his chest and they
pushed their hards into his and their abdomens too, and
they were licking his titties where the girls fingers rubbed
them, and that made all the boys hard too, and other boys
and girls enveloped the ones enveloping Tommy, and this
was what Jimmy called an orgy, though he pronounced it
wrong, and in the cobalt sky shine and on the brown grass
cold they tumbled into and onto each other, and Tommy
was saved and Tommy was a part and Tommy sucked Joel
and Joel sucked Tommy and Bobby licked the cunt of
Minelle who was busy cleaning off the cunt of Judy, and
everybody was happy and examining each other and
measuring things and calculating who could spurt the
furthest and how did girls get off too if nothing came out
of them when they were through, and Tommy said
something will come out of the girls if we don't use
protection. And he laughed. They were all just giggling all
over each other, tit sucking, leg fondling, penis rubbing,
ball stroking, and Tommy laughed as he said it, and all the
laughter started dying down and Tommy had no idea why.
It was Joel who years later when they had been lying there
though it had probably been only a moment or two, who
said, "Yeah, you're the preacher's kid." And nobody was
laughing. And everybody was silent. And Tommy was
pushed away from. And the kids started getting up, getting
dressed, seeming tired, seeming bored, seeming listless. In
fact the only one not listless was Tommy because he had
gotten three new Marvel annuals this week and there was
this great wind up to the Wolverine saga and he wanted to
tell them, he was bursting to tell them, because they said he
was smart and could tell stories really well, and that was
why they were unexplainably, not knowing why, leaving,
because the story teller had decamped. He looked at their
naked then semi naked bodies being clothed and then the
bodies being clothed entirely and then the walking away,
because he was the story teller and he lay on his back and
he held his shamed penis and he cried and he didn't know
what he had done.
It was silly not to use protection. They taught it in Sex. Ed.
and he was just repeating it. He remembered Joel's little
mouth seemed like red flannel as it had sucked Tommy's
penis into it, and how much fun it had been cumming just a
little on the mouth of Joel his best friend and how it
seemed his penis and Joel's mouth were made for each
other and then turnabout was fun too. He never figured it
out, did Tommy, the story teller who believed in super
heroes and the Flag and good vs. evil and the right of boys
to tell girls what to do and where to shove it, and now they
would really tell girls where to shove it and the girls would
because they would like the boys that much. And Tommy
had only said reality. Tommy had only said things that
linked to what they knew to be true, in their own heads and
from their own parents and teachers and preachers and
friends, so why was Tommy now the odd man out?
He did not like being naked alone. He did not like
remembering the squirmy bodies that had been on him,
how warm and friendly and nice they felt in the cold
November wind that now seemed far too cold without
them and he on the bottom just moments, decades, it
seemed, ago, and it was just a crummy deal, life was, and
he would not be happy again, because he had to be himself
and he did not know that he had not become not himself
while all the time the kids got themselves and him wrong in
the first place so it didn't matter not really. Only he was the
grumfugit of the group now. And he would forever be a
preacher's son. And he would forever be the center of
attention when it came to the right shoes to wear in the
rain and when it became the right time for the right girl to
marry and he could put his gayness behind him as well
because he did not know what that meant as time roared
along faster and faster.
So that night he got dressed and sat there on his hill that
was to be his alone from now till the end of boy time, they
would never return, his friends, and though he would
always be an important part of the group, he would never
know Joel cum again, Joel Cola, he thought, and laughed,
and laughed a long time then stopped because it made him
sad. And there was nothing more to do than just go home.
And be a preacher's kid. And be asked for advice by his
friends who would take that advice. They would still go
with him to the movies on Saturday and to any observing
eye that did not know, it would seem things were the very
same between them all, but Tommy, no longer the leader,
would never masturbate with them, and would always hear
their stories of fucking each other stop when he came
round them, the voices would just stop talking about sex,
and they never talked about sex with him again, and
sometimes when he took the plunge and asked if they
would like him to go to the beat Nick part of Kansas City
and see if he could pick up a HUSTLER, they laughed and
said, be sure to use protection, and then they would sashay
off without him.
And he knew they would be taking their clothes off in
some place he hadn't discovered, some place he would not
know where to find them any more than other kids did and
certainly adults, and he imagined Joel kissing Minelle,
because they had paired off recently, and it hurt his heart
terribly, and he saw Joel and Minelle in his dreams some
nights making love and it just about broke him apart.
Tommy knew there was nothing wrong with masturbating
and though he did it still of course, he didn't do it as often,
and he didn't like it as much, and if he just had continued
to be a dreamer and a story teller and see the world
through comic book stories, if he had just continued not to
be like the other kids, not be boring and tiresome and
pedantic and not all that bright when you came down to it,
and not have imaginations and not be really funny or really
much of anything, and they would be the first ones to tell
you Tommy had them beat totally in that game....but it was
one slip of the tongue and then he could never tongue any
of them ever again...horribly unfair. Watch out when you
win, Tommy observed year later, to himself, still trying to
obsessively figure out just what had gone wrong, watch
out when you really can do things other people can't and
wish they could, `cause they never forgive you for being
what they wanted you to be in the first place.
And when he sat in church on Sunday morning, stroking
his hard on through the hole in the left pocket of his pants,
not wearing underwear, for things like this were the things
that had begun inside him, little devil maybe?, when his
father went on and on in the pulpit about moral this and
moral that, Tommy remembered those nights when he
sneaked out of bed to the living room and watched his
parents watching "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green
Door" and he would watch them very carefully and he
would remember them all his life, what they did, how ugly
they looked, how angry, how tired seeming, how to keep
sex, like life, like love, mechanical, insert here, insert there,
breathe hard now, gasp now, turn round, let's do the
Varsity Rag, and don't nobody rat on anybody-it's all a
fuckin' con game anyhow, he would feel such hate inside
for the whole charade.
And Tommy hoping within all his days he could somehow
get the kids way back there in time when he had been a kid
with them way back in time to accept him again, to know
he was more and make it this time more not be less, please.
And as for wearing protection, the inception of whatever
had happened had happened, he would, if he could please
have another go at it, keep his frickin' mouth shut tightly
on Joel's penis. Joel's penis had been heaven. As Tommy
often remembered. But now when he thought about it,
remembered it, remembered Joel's face, when that mouth
had gone down on him, and all that sweet Joel devoted to
him, and how Joel's face looked when Tommy returned the
favor, long ago, and how these days Joel turned away from
him when they were still being vaguely nice to each other
in school or with Minelle or at the movies with the other
kids, all paired off, save for Tommy, and that hurting the
very most, remembering while having him right there
beside him and being unable to do anything about it..
Not ever again. So, when Tommy was 19, he stopped
reading comic books for good. And knew there were no
super heroes flashing in and out behind houses and schools
and trees and gone when he looked there straight on.
Hoping this would cut him a break. The clock would
rewind. Time would right itself and be what it should be.
But. It did not. But once out of the habit, well, you forget
Joel's mouth on you. And the music afterwards does not
seem sweet at all.
Not one little bit. Till finally you turn it off altogether.
Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net